Breast cancer patients are routinely being let down by the NHS due to the insensitivity of doctors and nurses, a report warns today

Breast cancer patients are routinely being let down by the NHS due to the insensitivity of doctors and nurses, a report warns today.

Many of those surveyed say staff were uncaring or casual when breaking the devastating news that they had the disease.

Other women are being made to drive a 60-mile round trip for exhausting radiotherapy, having been told by staff to make their own way there.

Sufferers also say they are not treated like human beings and, at times, are not given enough emotional support to help deal with the pain, side-effects and sometimes the prospect of death.

Breast Cancer Campaign, which compiled the report, also alleges that the NHS is failing to provide enough help for the thousands of women with secondary tumours – which are often terminal.

Many are not put in touch with specialist nurses who provide pain relief, end of life care and also help women make crucial decisions about refusing treatment and where to die.

A report by the charity today says one in eight women with breast cancer said doctors were insensitive when giving them the heartbreaking diagnosis.

Another 17 per cent were not given enough information about the illness and 15 per cent were not properly told about the surgery. Nearly 50,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in Britain every year and it leads to 11,500 deaths.

Around 570,000 are living with breast cancer, including 36,000 with secondary tumours that have spread to other organs and are incurable.

Although the NHS has made huge advances in treatment, screening and early diagnosis, campaigners say women are being failed by a lack of care and emotional support.

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Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of Breast Cancer Campaign, said efforts to monitor the standards of care within the NHS were ‘virtually non-existent’.

‘It’s not enough to pay lip service to standards of care and consider that job done,’ she said. ‘Women living with breast cancer face many challenges, but poor-quality care should not be one of them.

'I WAS JUST A NUMBER': WOMAN MADE TO FEEL LIKE A 'TUMOUR' BY STAFF

Caroline Brook, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010

Caroline Brook, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2010, says she was made to feel like a tumour rather than a human being.

The 44-year-old businesswoman from Stotfold, Bedfordshire, faced a two-hour drive for radiotherapy because the hospital said she was well enough to make her own way there and had to wait an hour and a half for the results of the final scan which told her she was in the clear.

At one point she got lost in the system and staff failed to book her mammogram.

‘The hospital departments don’t speak to each other.

To them I was just a breast person, a chemotherapy person, a radiotherapy person,’ she said.

‘You just feel like you are one of their little boxes.’

‘We have a group of women who are really gravely ill who are just being lost in the numbers.’

Ciaran Devane, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: ‘Whilst most of the NHS delivers fantastic care every day, we know that cancer patients are still being let down when they are at their most vulnerable.’

The report looked at the care of 13,916 women who took part in the NHS’s annual cancer patient experience survey last year. Twelve per cent said they should have been told about their cancer more sensitively and 17 per cent were not given any written information about the illness.

Another 22 per cent said they weren’t given enough information about side-effects and 40 per cent weren’t warned about long-term repercussions of treatment.

And 40 per cent – many of them terminally ill – said their family were not given enough support to help care for them at home.

Sean Duffy, national clinical director for cancer at NHS England, said: ‘We want world-class cancer services for all patients and all cancers. What we know is that although we have made great strides over recent years, quality varies between cancers and across the country.’